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Self-Regulated Learning: Beliefs, Techniques, and Illusions
Abstract and Figures
Knowing how to manage one's own learning has become increasingly important in recent years, as both the need and the opportunities for individuals to learn on their own outside of formal classroom settings have grown. During that same period, however, research on learning, memory, and metacognitive processes has provided evidence that people often have a faulty mental model of how they learn and remember, making them prone to both misassessing and mismanaging their own learning. After a discussion of what learners need to understand in order to become effective stewards of their own learning, we first review research on what people believe about how they learn and then review research on how people's ongoing assessments of their own learning are influenced by current performance and the subjective sense of fluency. We conclude with a discussion of societal assumptions and attitudes that can be counterproductive in terms of individuals becoming maximally effective learners. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 64 is November 30, 2012. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
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... These ideas converge with a growing body of evidence indicating that humans (Boldt & Yeung, 2015;Meyniel, Sigman, & Mainen, 2015;Navajas et al., 2017;Yeung & Summerfield, 2012) and other animals (Kepecs et al., 2008;Kepecs & Mainen, 2012) represent the uncertainty involved in decision making in the form of subjective confidence and that they use these representations adaptively to guide their behavior. For instance, people's ability to quantify uncertainty explains differences in learning across age groups (Nassar et al., 2016), and confidence in one's knowledge predicts study strategies (Bjork et al., 2013;Metcalfe & Finn, 2008;Mihalca et al., 2017;Nelson & Dunlosky, 1991;Thiede, 1999), individual differences in learning speed (Frömer et al., 2021), informationseeking (Desender et al., 2018;Fernbach et al., 2019;Wood & Lynch, 2002), and task selection (Carlebach & Yeung, 2020). Meanwhile, on a social level, confidence can be used to communicate uncertainty when sharing information (Bahrami et al., 2010;Bonaccio & Dalal, 2006;Pescetelli et al., 2016Pescetelli et al., , 2021. ...
... Since being proposed as an area of inquiry (Flavell, 1979), research on metacognition has identified several ways in which the ability to represent one's cognitive processes contributes to decision making, from guiding the selection of study strategies (Bjork et al., 2013;Metcalfe & Finn, 2008;Nelson & Dunlosky, 1991) to weighting the reliability of advice (Bahrami et al., 2010;Pescetelli et al., 2016). One area that has recently received attention is associative learning, where evidence suggests that people accurately represent uncertainty in a learning environment and use their confidence in their knowledge to modulate the rate of learning (Meyniel & Dehaene, 2017;Meyniel, Schlunegger, & Dehaene, 2015). ...
... In this way, representations of local uncertainty (here regarding associative learning) can contribute to the broader optimization of a person's behavior. This optimization parallels that seen in other forms of metacognition, such as evaluations of decision confidence governing whether to seek more information before committing to a choice (Desender et al., 2018), or metamemory evaluations in educational settings, where confidence in knowledge of material ahead of a test determines which items people choose to revise and how much time they spend revising (e.g., Bjork et al., 2013;Metcalfe & Finn, 2008;Thiede, 1999). Our findings show that similar metacognitive regulation operates even in basic learning processes. ...
... Importantly, there is limited research on students' metacognitive beliefs and preferences regarding collaboration. Metacognitive beliefs are an important aspect of learning because students rely on their metacognition to monitor their learning and select appropriate strategies [3]. In the present study, we examine students' perceptions of collaborative study, collaborative testing, their use of study groups, the strategies they use when studying individually and in groups, and which characteristics of their fellow group members students believe are most important for successful collaboration. ...
... Theories of self-regulated learning also suggest that students rely on metacognitive beliefs to select study strategies [3]. Again, there is a dissociation between metacognition and cognition in the strategies students use to study, as students often prefer to use non-optimal strategies. ...
Collaboration plays an important role in educational contexts. However, little is known about students’ metacognitive beliefs about collaboration. The present study used an online survey to investigate students’ beliefs toward group study/recall, their studying preferences, strategies they use when studying individually and in groups, and important characteristics of their group members. Results indicate that, although students generally perceive collaboration as beneficial, they prefer individual study, indicating that their beliefs are inconsistent with their learning preferences. Students report social learning as the primary reason for collaborative benefits but prefer to study alone to minimize distraction and increase personal accountability. Further, they use different strategies when studying individually or in a group. When studying individually, students most frequently report re-reading their notes. However, when studying in groups, students most frequently use strategies emphasizing collaboration and interaction, such as quizzing each other. Also, students prefer to work with group members who are focused, motivated, and hard working. Students’ beliefs, preferences, and favored characteristics of group members are related to their frequency of using study groups. Students’ metacognitive beliefs about collaboration have implications for theories of self-regulated learning and better use of collaboration in educational contexts.
... Nevertheless, with the abundance of educational resources accessible in the dynamic digital realm [2], learners now have more chances to expand their knowledge beyond the confines of conventional classrooms. Meanwhile, learners are required to possess sophisticated skills [3] and develop strategies for learning independently [4,5], namely selfregulated learning behaviors. It has been well demonstrated that these behaviors could enhance academic performance [6,7] and potentially boost career prospects [8]; thus, they are regarded as one crucial survival skill in the 21st century. ...
Background
Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a pivotal skill in the digital era, closely correlating to academic performance and professional development, particularly within medicine, where rapid advancements in knowledge and technology demand continuous learning. The Self-Regulated Learning Perception Scale (SRLPS), validated for reliability and validity, is a critical tool for assessing SRL among medical students. However, its application in Chinese medical education remains largely unexplored. This study aims to adapt the SRLPS for Chinese medical students and to develop a concise version to reduce participant burden and enhance the scale’s practicality and generalizability.
Methods
Two stages of surveys were conducted. In Stage 1, SRLPS was translated into Chinese through forward translation, back translation, and review and then was administered to 339 medical students. To assess the internal reliability and construct validity of the Chinese version of SRLPS, we calculated Cronbach’s α values and conducted Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), respectively. According to psychometric performance, some items were removed to create a short version of SRLPS (SRLPS-S). In Stage 2, the SRLPS-S was administered to 736 medical students to verify its reliability and construct validity using Cronbach’s α and CFA. Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used to examine the associations between self-regulated learning perceptions and personal and household characteristics, including gender, maternal education level, and annual household income.
Results
The Chinese SRLPS demonstrated acceptable internal consistency reliability and construct validity, although the elevated Cronbach’s α indicated possible item redundancy. The SRLPS-S exhibited satisfactory internal consistency reliability and construct validity, confirming the four-domain structure of the original SRLPS. Wilcoxon Rank-sum test showed students’ self-regulated learning positively linked to higher maternal education levels, higher annual household income, and male gender.
Conclusion
The Chinese SRLPS and its short version are reliable and valid for assessing self-regulated learning. These scales can assist educators in identifying students who might require additional support in their learning strategies and can also be used for personal development. The short version is recommended for its enhanced psychometric properties and greater cost-efficiency.
... This is with good reason. Confidence judgments are easy to collect, and people have experience rendering confidence judgments across a variety of domains ranging from decision making (e.g., Ackerman & Thompson, 2014) to perceptual judgments (e.g., Shekhar & Rahnev, 2024;Stephens et al., 2017), and memory judgments (e.g., Bjork et al., 2013;Dunlosky et al., 2005;Metcalfe & Finn, 2008;Wixted & Wells, 2017). Most importantly, across these domains, confidence tends to be highly correlated with accuracy (Brewer et al., 2005;DeSoto & Roediger, 2014;Dunlosky & Metcalfe, 2009;Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996;Perfect & Hollins, 1996;Thompson et al., 2011). ...
We examined whether the potential to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate decisions on eyewitness lineups could be improved by combining information from three witness behaviors: confidence, decision time, and the language that witnesses use to justify their lineup decisions. We assessed the postdictive potential of these variables for both positive identifications and lineup rejections on both simultaneous and sequential lineups. All three behaviors independently postdicted the accuracy of both positive identifications and lineup rejections for both simultaneous and sequential lineups. The potential to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate lineup decisions was maximized by considering all three variables. Interestingly, the classifier trained to distinguish the language of accurate and inaccurate witnesses appeared to recover a distinction between use of absolute- and relative-judgment strategies. For both simultaneous and sequential lineups, accurate decisions were accompanied by absolute language and inaccurate decisions were accompanied by relative language. The applied implications of this work are clear—accurate witnesses are confident, fast, and reference an absolute-judgment strategy. This work also advances theory on why sequential lineups lead to worse discriminability than do simultaneous lineups. Sequential lineups do not increase use of absolute- judgment strategies, but might make it more difficult to determine the strongest match to memory.
... In light of the intimate relationship between strategy effectiveness beliefs and strategy usage during self-regulated learning (R. A. Bjork et al., 2013;Yang et al., 2017), we argue that enhanced metacognitive awareness of the superiority of interleaving is likely to correspondingly increase its use in the postintervention task. As anticipated, in Experiments 1 and 2, participants in the intervention group chose to study 56%-64% of exemplars via the interleaving strategy while the corresponding proportion was only 39%-42% in the control group. ...
Interleaving (intermixing exemplars from different categories) is more effective in promoting inductive learning than blocking (massing exemplars from a given category together). Yet learners typically prefer blocking over interleaving during self-regulated inductive learning, highlighting the need to develop effective interventions to overcome this metacognitive illusion and promote learners’ practical use of the interleaving strategy. Drawing on a sample of university students, three experiments examined the effects of an instructional intervention on (a) correction of metacognitive fallacies regarding the superiority of blocking over interleaving for inductive learning, (b) adoption of the interleaving strategy during self-regulated learning when learners are allowed to make study choices exemplar-by-exemplar, (c) classification performance, and (d) transfer of category learning across diverse domains. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that instructions about the benefits of interleaving over blocking improved metacognitive awareness of the efficacy of interleaving and enhanced self-usage of the interleaving strategy during learning of new categories. However, this intervention had negligible influence on interleaving distance and did not improve classification performance. Experiment 3 found that informing learners about the benefits of extensive interleaving, as compared to minimal interleaving or no interleaving, successfully increased interleaving distance and boosted classification performance, and the intervention effects transferred to learning categories in a different domain. These findings support the practical use of the instructional intervention in promoting self-usage of the interleaving strategy and highlight the important role of enlarging interleaving distance in facilitating inductive learning.
... As FE representam um conjunto de habilidades cognitivas e metacognitivas que auxiliam o indivíduo a tomar decisões de forma autônoma (Diamond, 2013(Diamond, , 2020 e, assim, estão relacionadas ao desenvolvimento de comportamentos autorregulados (Bjork et al., 2013). Do ponto de vista funcional, habilidades acadêmicas que dependem de processos de FE, incluindo produção escrita, compreensão de leitura, realização de lição de casa, trabalhos, testes e anotações, podem ser negativamente afetadas por déficits nas FE (Meltzer, 2010;Nouwens et al., 2021;Ruffini et al., 2024;Spiegel et al., 2021). ...
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate structural relationships among high school students’ career adaptability, positive parenting attitudes of perceived, grit, and self-directed learning.Methods: The participants in this study were 575 1 ,2th grade high school students in tGyeongsan-si, Yeongcheon-si, and Daegu. The participants completed questionnaires assessing their career adaptability, positive parenting attitudes, grit, and self-directed learning. Data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0, AMOS 26.0. The maximum likelihood estimation method (ML) was used to evaluate the goodness of fit using RMSEA, SRMR and its 90% confidence interval, CFI, and TLI.Results: First, positive parenting attitudes toward high school students, grit, and self-directed learning directly affected high school students’ career adaptability. Second, positive parenting attitudes were found to indirectly affect high school students career adaptability through grit. Additionally, positive parenting attitudes were found to indirectly affects high school students career adaptability through self-directed learning. Third, positive parenting attitudes and high school students career adaptability were found to be sequentially double mediated in the relationship between grit, and self-directed learning.Conclusion: This study proved the model’s validity which was hypothesized to predict high school students career adaptability using related variables. Thus, this study provides a theoretical basis and multiple implications that can be meaningfully used to show that positive parenting attitudes, grit, and self-directed learning can increase the effectiveness of high school students career adaptability.
The experiments address the degree to which retrieval fluency—the ease with which information is accessed from long-term memory—guides and occasionally misleads metamnemonic judgments. In each of 3 experiments, participants' predictions of their own future recall performance were examined under conditions in which probability or speed of retrieval at one time or on one task is known to be negatively related to retrieval probability on a later task. Participants' predictions reflected retrieval fluency on the initial task in each case, which led to striking mismatches between their predicted and actual performance on the later tasks. The results suggest that retrieval fluency is a potent but not necessarily reliable source of information for metacognitive judgments. Aspects of the results suggest that a basis on which better and poorer rememberers differ is the degree to which certain memory dynamics are understood, such as the fleeting nature of recency effects and the consequences of an initial retrieval. The results have pedagogical as well as theoretical implications, particularly with respect to the education of subjective assessments of ongoing learning.
Even when Ss fail to recall a solicited target, they can provide feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments about its availability in memory. Most previous studies addressed the question of FOK accuracy, only a few examined how FOK itself is determined, and none asked how the processes assumed to underlie FOK also account for its accuracy. The present work examined all 3 questions within a unified model, with the aim of demystifying the FOK phenomenon. The model postulates that the computation of FOK is parasitic on the processes involved in attempting to retrieve the target, relying on the accessibility of pertinent information. It specifies the links between memory strength, accessibility of correct and incorrect information about the target, FOK judgments, and recognition memory. Evidence from 3 experiments is presented. The results challenge the view that FOK is based on a direct, privileged access to an internal monitor.
The authors used paired-associate learning to investigate the hypothesis that the speed of generating an interactive image (encoding fluency) influenced 2 metacognitive judgments: judgments of learning (JOLs) and quality of encoding ratings (QUEs), Results from Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that latency of a keypress indicating successful image formation was negatively related to both JOLs and QUEs even though latency was unrelated to recall. Experiment 3 demonstrated that when concrete and abstract items were mixed in a single list, latency was related to concreteness, judgments, and recall, However, item concreteness and fluency influenced judgments independently of one another. These outcomes suggest an important role of encoding fluency in the formation of metacognitive judgments about learning and future recall.
Research on judgments of verbal learning has demonstrated that participants' judgments are unreliable and often overconfident The authors studied judgments of perceptual-motor learning. Participants learned 3 keystroke patterns on the number pad of a computer, each requiring that a different sequence of keys be struck in a different total movement time. Practice trials on each pattern were either blocked or randomly interleaved with trials on the other patterns, and each participant was asked, periodically, to predict his or her performance on a 24-hr test. Consistent with earlier findings, blocked practice enhanced acquisition but harmed retention. Participants, though, predicted better performance given blocked practice. These results augment research on judgments of verbal learning and suggest that humans, at their peril, interpret current ease of access to a perceptual-motor skill as a valid index of learning.
Metacognition offers an up-to-date compendium of major scientific issues involved in metacognition. The twelve original contributions provide a concise statement of theoretical and empirical research on self-reflective processes or knowing about what we know.
Self-reflective processes are often thought to be central to what we mean by consciousness and the personal self. Without such processes, one would presumably respond to stimuli in an automatized and environmentally bound manner—that is, without the characteristic patterns of behavior and introspection that are manifested as plans, strategies, reflections, self-control, self-monitoring, and intelligence.
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